WSS 3.0 Configuration Wizard exception

After installing WSS 3.0 I'm getting the following error in the configuration wizard:

An Exception of type
System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException was
thrown. Additional exception
information Timeout Expired.The
timeout period elapsed prior to
completion of the operation or the
server is not responding.

Something has happened to my SharePoint install. If I try to run the SharePoint Products and Technologies ConfigurationWizardI get the following error pop up:
An exception of type Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.PostSetupConfigurationTaskException was thrown. Additional exception information:
A failure occurred when accessing the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0\WSS registry key. Repair this product by selecting it from the Add/Remove Programs menu.
For further details please see the diagnostic log located at C

I have a new SharePoint 2010 server farm that I'm trying to configure. Installation went fine. But I'm having trouble getting the user profiles to import.
I've created the User Profile service application, and the two user profile services are running. However, whenever I try to create a synchronization connection to our AD servers, I'm getting the following error:
"The operation was aborted because the client side timeout limit was exceeded."
In the SharePoint logs, when I filter based on the correlation ID, I get the following messages:
Name=Request (POST:http://poc-bi-sp:8080/_layouts

When I go to manage service applications in Central Administration and try to create a new service application like: New > Create a new service application, the link isn't active.
My issue is I would like to create a Search Service Application after installing Search Server Express 2010.
Do I need to run the Farm ConfigurationWizard and install the below if I can create a Search Service... migrated WSS v3 to SharePoint Foundation 2010 and then installed Search Express 2010 on top of it.
I am logged in with an account that has full farm administration access.
Update 2:
I migrated WSS

I am installing SharePoint 2010 single farm on my 64bit Win7 Ultimate development machine. After a lot of pain and apparent success of the installation, I am not finding the "Farm ConfigurationWizard" on the "Configuration Wizards" page of Central Administration.
Looking for reasons why and things to check to make it show up.

\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0\WSS registry key. Repair this product by selecting it from the Add/Remove Programs menu.
If I access Central Administration via a browser... running the test console app that I get the following output:
A first chance exception of type 'System.DllNotFoundException' occurred in Microsoft.SharePoint.dll
which doesn't sound good. So I...All of a sudden, stsadm has stopped working, crashing on all commands it is run with (even -help!)
e.g.
> stsadm.exe -help
Unhandled Exception: System.ArgumentNullException: Value cannot be null

I want to create a new SharePoint 2010 farm using PowerShell. I use the following command:
New-SPConfigurationDatabase
When issuing this command (and providing the needed parameters) I get the following error:
New-SPConfigurationDatabase : This SharePoint farm currently has pending upgrades.
The cmdlet New-SPConfigurationDatabase cannot be executed until the upgrade is completed.
When running the "SharePoint 2010 Products ConfigurationWizard" I'm able to create a farm.
I have a freshly installed Windows Server 2008 R2 with SQL 2008 R2 on the same box (it's a demo box

into this and decided to completely re-install MOSS on that box.
I have tried to re-run the config wizard to hook this server up to the existing config database and to re-create the central admin site. However I now get a security exception when the config wizard is run.
These are the relevant lines from the config wizards log file:
05/05/2010 09:43:45 8 INF Creating connection string for admin content db...
05/05/2010 09:43:47 8 ERR Task configdb has failed with an unknown exception
05/05/2010 09:43:47 8 ERR Exception: System.Security.SecurityException: Access denied.
The account that I am using